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MacGamever - Blaugust Day 2

Zyngor | Sunday, August 02, 2015

I was watching a couple episodes of MacGyver the other day. The first featured his good pal, the ever-scheming but loyal Jack Dalton, and an unhealthy dose of brainwashing to assassinate the Prime Minister of Malaysia a foreign leader. The second, just your typical typical terrorist plot in the woods, when, would you know it, MacGyver and boss/pal Pete Thornton unknowingly stumble in while returning from a ski vacation. Wherever the Phoenix Foundation (fictitious think tank group) goes, evildoers seem to follow in droves.

Ever since I had actually started watching the show several years back, I've admired the portrayal of the MacGyver character as a practical, laid-back, fix-it man for all things globally important. Whether it was stopping a deadly gas spill from reaching the water supply, freeing an innocent political prisoner from his imprisonment at a mental institution, or even thwarting an invasion of frenzied fire ants in the Amazon, the master of improvisation would be there to create inventive solutions.

Master Jedi Angus MacGyver, battling a bevy of druglords

The pilot episode had our resourceful hero heading into the depths of a bomb-shattered lab, armed with basically just an empty knapsack and a roll of duct tape. When asked why he was going in so light, he basically replied, "The bag's not for what I take, but for what I pick up along the way." Needless to say, when you have an ear-catching theme song, and your name goes so far in the meme-osphere that it becomes a verb, you know you got something good that'll span generations.

Maybe this is why I enjoy the alternative routes of adventure that open-world games offer. Now, I'll admit that most of my MMO experiences are theme park, as somehow the sandbox-oriented pieces of a game have either eluded my wallet (ie having the effective side of the labor point system in Archeage behind a paywall, which seems to drive their sandbox elements), or are simply not something I look for in an MMO (like building in Trove, basically a free Minecraft with a heavier focus on its action combat.)

Single-player non-linear journeys, such as Skyrim, Just Cause 2, or the GTA games often provide me the freedom to achieve a task through a variety of options. Shall Rico (JC2) tether up to that water tower, place explosive charges, and detonate it the only cool way possible - facing the opposite direction? Or perhaps a "borrowed" military chopper from your unfriendly neighborhood base will do the trick?

This shall make a pretty scarf, or, boar sausages?

The Far Cry series takes the ingenuity of MacGyver, and cranks the violent tendencies way up. Hunting allows the player to craft various upgrades, skillfully using pelts and guts as organic tools toward the survival end of the spectrum. It doesn't take knowing the "definition of insanity" to know that these pirates mean business, just as you may see watching any episode of our favorite human Swiss Army knife.

Now if only the Dragonborn could turn a stick of gum and a paper clip into an incendiary explosive, they'd sure save a lot of skill points in the Destruction tree.

Interested in Blaugust? Check out Belghast's announcement post here, and check out all of the blogger madness over at the Nook!

Does anyone else wonder how MacGyver always has what he needs conveniently around him for the situation he's in? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!I'd say more, but I don't want the wrath of two sisters on me.